Grey, now 50, became a Hollywood star when she starred opposite Swayze in the 1987 film. She played Frances 'Baby' Houseman and gave Swayze one of his most memorable movie lines: "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

The actress is a contestant in the 11th series of the hit US show, which began last night.

In a move surely calculated to wring an emotional performance from Grey, the producers assigned her a song from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, These Arms of Mine. The actress broke down in tears during rehearsals with partner Derek Hough as she remembered Swayze, who died last year from pancreatic cancer.

"It took me back in a time capsule, and I was with Patrick. I just missed him," she said. "He was such a big presence in my life."

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Grey's appearance on the reality show is an attempt to resurrect a career which took a disastrous turn following her early success in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, two of the most popular films of the 1980s.

In the early 1990s, she underwent plastic surgery to remodel her distinctive nose, in the hope that that it would lead to more work. The surgery had the opposite effect - her face looked so different that even close friends failed to recognise her, and her career went downhill.

"I went into the operating theatre a celebrity and came out anonymous," she once said. "It was like being in a witness protection programme or being invisible."

Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol made an attention-grabbing debut on the show.

In a nod to her Republican mother, the 19-year-old danced to the Tom Jones hit Mama Told Me Not To Come.

Miss Palin said she intended to dance in a style that "didn't embarrass her mom" but made her debut in a grey power suit modelled on one of her mother's outfits, only to strip off and reveal a scarlet mini-dress.

The teenager became a public figure during the US presidential campaign when it emerged that she was pregnant by boyfriend Levi Johnston. She is now a mother and spokesperson for sexual abstinence before marriage.

The line-up also includes David Hasselhoff, who made an inauspicious start with partner Kym Johnson. The Baywatch actor's attempt at a cha-cha was described by Tonioli as "a pot-pourri of insanity disguised as dance". Fellow judge Len Goodman told Hasselhoff: "It's never too early to panic."